Alienware Sells Marine $6,000 Paperweight, Shrugs

The Alienware Aurora ALX is a pricey, awesome gaming computer that sort of looks like a blue Cylon. Except in Drew’s home, it looks more like a giant $6,000 paperweight. No matter how many extra parts Alienware/Dell try to sell him to fix the problem, the glorious beast still won’t work. Drew is a Marine, and he, his family, and his computer are now stationed in Okinawa, Japan. That means transferring the warranty to Dell Japan if he wants to keep trying to get the damn thing to work. What’s Japanese for “lemon law”?

Back in 2010 i was a recently promoted First Lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Using the bonus to my check I purchased a $6000 Alienware Aurora ALX and anxiously waited for a month for it to arrive to my Apartment. When it arrived, I was thrilled and could not wait to dive into this new high-powered beast of a gaming machine ….boy was i wrong. The moment I turned the computer on , every two or three hours there would be a completely random reboot with absolutely no error message. . . and so begins my tale…

1st Contact with Alienware / Dell Technical Support Agent: Dell Technical support agent suggested i update all my drivers as well as my BIOS in order to fix the problem… this did not work.

2nd Contact: Suggested that I replace my power supply. Technical support agent arrived four days later and replaced….the problems persisted.

3rd Contact: Suggested I purchase an additional Uninterrupted Power Supply (which the technician was so gracious to provide) costing me an additional $300. This did not work.

Around this time my family and I moved to our new Duty Station in Okinawa Japan where I currently am located as a communications officer. Browsing the alienware forms as well as Google, i noticed that MANY Alienware Aurora ALX computers were having the EXACT SAME PROBLEM AS ME…and many people stated that the fix was to replace my RAM cards.

4th Contact: I spoke again to a Dell Technical Agent – they suggested i do the same. I spent an additional $138 dollars on RAM… this did not work…

5th Contact: I called Dell Technical Support and they informed me that there was another set of urgent updates for my computer which should fix the issue…. one of these updates was an upgrade to my BIOS. I downloaded the new updates and in the process of installing the new BIOS my computer did its magic trick of randomly rebooting…. causing my motherboard to tweak out and now the computer is broken….

Last Contact with Dell: it has been near a year now since i purchased my Alienware. It has now degraded from bad to worse. I called dell Technical Support and they absolutely refused to help me because I am now forward deployed to Okinawa Japan….I now have to submit a form, that takes up to 30 days, to transfer my warranty from US to Japan before i can get any sort of technical assistance… so that leaves me completely out of a computer for what looks to be months…no urgency has been placed on this issue and the issue still remains unsolved for many people. I now have a very pretty looking $6000 (plus the additional items that were suggested i buy) paperweight….

I am only asking that Dell / Alienware either give me credit to the amount which i paid for this computer OR replace the computer completely… i have not had any success with anyone responding to me.